Biography of Daniel D. McAuliffe

Daniel D. McAuliffe. While Saline County knows him as a pioneer settler and for many years one of the leading farmers and stockmen, Daniel D. McAuliffe is in fact one of the few remaining picturesque characters of the real West. He was in Western Kansas during the time of the Indians, the buffalo, and all the other features of the wild and woolly West. Few men have had more experience in that life, and his career serves in a way as a connecting link between the now fast receding past and the modern and progressive era of the present.

His travels through the world have covered a great area of country. He was born in County Limerick, Ireland, March 6, 1840, a son of Dennis and Bridget (Fitzgerald) McAuliffe. He grew up in his native country, had a variety of experiences there, and came to America at the age of twenty-six in 1866. A few months he was employed in a stone quarry in New York. In 1867 his first boy adventure led him to the western section of Kansas. For about a year he was employed as a keeper of a stage relay station on a stage line then operating between Fort Harker and Denver. It was a post lonely and isolated, on the very frontier, and exposed to all its dangers. After he had been there about a year he was driven away by hostile Indians. Mr. McAuliffe was in Kansas in time to see the buffalo in immense herds, and with the buffalo always went the wild Indian. During his experiences in the West he became personally acquainted with some of the most famous characters of the time, including Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill and other western characters. After leaving the stage line he was in the employ of the post trader at old Fort Hayes, Kansas, for a few months. Going to Atchison, Mr. McAuliffe conducted one of the hotels of that city for three years.

Up to that time he had acquired experience and had satisfied his desire for roving and adventure, and in 1871 he determined to settle down permanently. He therefore removed to Saline County and bought a tract of land four miles east of Salina, in the very locality where he now resided. He used his land for stock raising and also for farming on a large scale, and for a number of years specialized in the Shorthorn cattle and the Poland China hogs. Whatever Mr. McAuliffe had done in the course of a busy lifetime had been done effectively and on a broad and generous scale. In 1914 he retired from the active responsibilities of farming and is in a position to enjoy every comfort during his declining years. He still owned a valuable and well improved farm of 240 acres, and also had other business interests.

Mr. McAuliffe served as justice of the peace of Greeley Township, is a liberal democrat in politics, and a member of the Catholic Church. On September 20, 1871, the same year that he came to Saline County, Mr. McAuliffe married Kate Mengas, a native of Herman, Missouri, and of German parentage.